After twelve years on Death Row, Dennis Stockton was finally given a simple choice. Convicted of accepting money to commit murder, he was offered death by electrocution or death by lethal injection.While there was always the hope of a successful outcome to his final appeal, the only other real alternative on offer was to attempt the most daring escape in the history of the US penal system. Thus, taking advantage of a corrupt and complacent prison staff, six condemned men pulled off a dazzlingly successful bluff, using a prison van to drive through the front gates of the 'escape-proof' Mecklenburg Prison and into the night.Using Stockton's meticulous diary records of his spell in Mecklenburg, Joe Jackson and William Burke Jnr. have produced a masterpiece of suspense which will find its place in the true crime pantheon alongside Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song.
